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Why is California so fascinated on agriculture which is extremely water intensive? Coffee is up there with Almonds as far as I understand the situation.
by phil21 9y ago
Why is California so fascinated on agriculture which is extremely water intensive? Coffee is up there with Almonds as far as I understand the situation.
- starpilot 9y agoBecause it is profitable in California, with arable land and sunshine, to a degree not found in other states.
- pkaye 9y agoThe better question is why are more states not so fascinated with agriculture?
- dominotw 9y agoAvailability of cheap agricultural labor?
- dominotw 9y agohttps://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/california-agriculture-sees-wave-of-immigration-audits.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/california-agriculture-sees-...
- maxerickson 9y agoIt pretty much comes down to weather. Importing water is easier than importing sun and heat.
- IntronExon 9y ago...until said water runs out, then you’re hot, sunny, and dry.
- skybrian 9y agoBut who knows, that might change: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/11/8/16611710/vertical-farms https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/11/8/1661171...
- lerie82 9y agoI think the much better question is why are only 2 U.S. states allowed to grow coffee?
- wizardforhire 9y agoClimate is the big one, land and access to water (I know this seems weird for California but they do have it). You could grow in West TX, southern NM and AZ but the water logistics are not there. You see the same crops in FL, but they have less land to support the same kind of agriculture infrastructure as they do in California. The labor situation is a symptom of the above factors, by its very nature its mobile. If you had the farms to support it, the labor would follow.
- walshemj 9y agoLarge famers lobbying groups.
- jayess 9y agoLack of market forces.
- pkulak 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
- IntronExon 9y agoThis comes up a lot here, but in theory a government is supposed to make hard decisions to prevent that tragedy. On its own simply saying “tragedy of the commons” is like a trauma surgeon saying, “sucking chest wound,” without stepping in to fix it.
- yongjik 9y agoI think it's more like the surgeon is being held back by people saying "No, don't step in because you'll make it worse! The human body can heal itself." And you, the surgeon, can do nothing but mutter "a punctured lung ain't gonna heal itself."
- IntronExon 9y agoA good surgeon should step in and accept the consequences, while saving a life; that is ultimately what they signed up for. No one said it would be easy or make you happy to do good, right? Still, I’m not ignoring your point, which is solid.
- jseliger 9y agoPeople and especially agricultural users don't pay anything like the true cost of water: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/03/the-california-water-shortage-again.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/03/the.... Charge everyone the same cost per liter or gallon or 1,000 gallons and you will find out what should actually be grown.
- notatoad 9y ago> you will find out what should actually be grown. the problem with that is "what should actually be grown" has different answers depending on whether you value profit or feeding people.
- draw_down 9y agoRight. The word “should” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
- swsieber 9y agoIn this case though the high water items are not what feed people well - almonds and coffee?
- YokoZar 9y agoIn this case, we aren't feeding people. We're feeding cows. We're also running into frequent water crises where politicians ask people to shower less while we dump 90% of the state's water on the ground.
- devmunchies 9y agoExactly. You want to decrease the water usage inefficiencies up the chain. The govt should advocate eating less animal products (I'm not necessarily saying all) if it really cared about conservation.
- fmihaila 9y ago> the problem with that is "what should actually be grown" has different answers depending on whether you value profit or feeding people. It can only be a choice between making a profit and feeding people at break-even (feeding people while losing money is not sustainable). Beyond that, the profit signal carries useful information about what the people being fed would rather eat, while keeping in line with what is economically and environmentally viable. The problem with the current situation is that water is mispriced, and mispricing, regardless of whether it favours suppliers or consumers, makes it unsustainable in the long run.
- gregw134 9y agoPeople don't ever talk about this, but we still grow rice in California. To grow rice you have to flood a field in several inches of water.
- Qwertious 9y agoSounds like rice should be grown aquaponically or hydroponically or not at all.
- narrator 9y agoThe Sierra provide ample water and silt for the central valley that makes it one of the worlds ideal farming lands. It's been very actively farmed for more than 100 years. Sure, the water situation has gone up and down with the drought, but normally there's plenty of water. A lot of the almond orchards had to be scaled back during the drought, but when there's water they use it. It's a lot more sustainable than many other farming lands because it's not dependent on an underground aquifer that took eons to fill up or water piped in from somewhere far away except for the urban areas of course.
- skybrian 9y agoOh come on, that's a weird definition of "ample", considering the frequent droughts and that water rights have always been a huge source of dispute in the western U.S. The question is whether there's enough water for both farming and huge cities. Cities can pay much more, so if water rights were transferrable, farmers wouldn't grow almonds. They would sell their water to cities and retire.
- lostlogin 9y agoIs it a drought or is the baseline taken from an unusually wet period?
- dgacmu 9y agoI wish this was true, but it's not: https://ca.water.usgs.gov/projects/central-valley/land-subsidence-san-joaquin-valley.html https://ca.water.usgs.gov/projects/central-valley/land-subsi... The land in parts of the central valley has subsided by meters due to long-term groundwater depletion.
- ghshephard 9y agoAccording to http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Report14.pdf http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Report14.pdf it requires 140 liters of water to produce 1 cup of coffee. The most expensive source of water that I can think of, from a reverse-osmosis desalinization plant, costs $0.40/1000 liters in Singapore (Hyflux, 20 year contract), - so that cup of coffee has a ceiling of about $0.08/to produce in terms of the cost of it's water content. The question should never be "how much water to produce this" - but, "what value are we getting from the water" - if you are able to sell a cup of coffee for $5, then it's probably a good investment of that $0.08.
- gradys 9y agoThis depends on water being well-priced in California (i.e. not subsidized, reflective of opportunity costs and externalities). I don't know much about water in CA, but is this the case?
- anubisresources 9y agoCalifornia has a very strange water system. It’s not really privatized, only ~5% of California’s water is provided by private parties last I checked. Californian water rights promise significantly more water than the state actually has (which will cause some problems). The water districts and utilities do most of the price setting, as I understand it. The water districts are largely controlled by farming interests who do not want pricy water. This info may be out of date, since I work in a very different water market (East Africa), so if someone knows better please correct me.
- skybrian 9y agoDefinitely not and it would probably put most agriculture in California out of business. Farmers can't compete with cities on price. https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21647994-why-golden-state-so-bad-managing-water-price-wrong https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21647994-why-go...
- loverofthings 9y ago
- sidibe 9y agoYou can grow pretty much anything in California. Soil is great, perfect weather for a wide variety of crops, and the dryness actually helps with pests and disease if you have another source of water.
- lostlogin 9y agoThat’s a hell of an ‘if’. The other stuff is surely easier to get than water is?
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago>Why is California so fascinated on agriculture which is extremely water intensive? Coffee is up there with Almonds as far as I understand the situation. Check the Netflix documentary "Water & Power", it gives a good reason to consider why. Essentially, people trying to control the water.
- booleandilemma 9y agoYour comment got me wondering if cactus juice is a thing, and apparently, it is.
- lostlogin 9y agoCall it cactus milk and then it’ll sell.
- almostApatriot1 9y agoCalifornia has a lot of ag industry and they are interested in making as much money as possible. California doesn't have a collective consciousness.
- TaylorGood 9y agoHere’s a fascinating long form on CA water, Ag and the largest almond and pistachio land owner in California with 180,000 acres.
- credit_guy 9y agoThe more water a plant takes, the more CO2 it scrubs from the air, right? That's not entirely bad, I would think.
- xyzzyz 9y agoNo, that is not how it works. CO2 is only removed from atmosphere if it is sequestered in some solid, like wood — CO2 is not deleted by plants, it’s just transformed to different form. Additionally, plants aren’t really sequestering CO2 from human emissions, unless you bury them underground as you grow them — if you only let it grow without storing it underground, you are only replacing CO2 from deforestation.
- credit_guy 9y agoI know this, but still, I think temporary CO2 removal from the atmosphere is not totally worthless. It buys us more time until more clean energy comes online. And if this time is paid for by rich coffee aficionados, I think that's not a bad deal after all. Oh, and I doubt there's any deforestation going on in California.
- xyzzyz 9y agoToday? Probably not much. Historically? Yes, a lot. You still need to offset for that first, even if happened 150 years ago.
- mrob 9y agoThe majority of the water a plant absorbs is lost to the air as transpiration. Different plants lose different percentages of water this way, so high water use doesn't necessarily mean more CO2 absorption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpiration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpiration
- pzone 9y agoThe logic here is slightly backwards. The reason there's a water crisis in California is because it's a fantastic place to grow things.